Fancy being plasticised?

Yesterday I went to see Gunther Von Hagen's Bodyworlds exhibition at the O2 dome. I'd been looking forward to going with a mixture of anticipation, curiosity and morbid facination... the exhibition is a display of real human bodies who have been specially preserved and treated so that they are effectively plasticised. Their skin is removed exposing the underlying muscles, tendons, organs and bones, depending on which Von Hagen wants to display.

When we first entered, there was a cabinet with glass vials laid out in a row. There was a lot of people crowded round it, but when we got to have a look, I realised that each glass tube contained a real life foetus, ranging from 2 weeks to 8 weeks. The first foetus looked nothing more than a pea sized white blob, but by week 8, although it was no bigger than my thumbnail, you could make out fingers, toes, a face... I was totally and utterly freaked out. And it got worse... in the next room, a pregnant woman lay on her side, de-skinned and abdomen disected revealing her unborn child inside. In glass cabinets around the room there were preserved babies at varying stages of development. Now, this all sounds very horrific and traumatising, but to be honest, foetuses aside, it wasn't. You almost become detached from the fact that everything on display is real and once living. The preservation process leaves the subjects looking more like a wax work at the natural history museum than a real life person. As we walked from room to room, we came across more and more bodies. Some had their skulls opened up, displaying the brain, nervous system and spinal cord. Some had all bones removed, and only their muscles remained. Some, just the skeleton, ligaments and tendons. There were cases with organs, healthy and diseased. Kidneys riddled with cysts. Lungs corroded from smoking. Hearts which have hemmoraged. It was all very facinating, and had the very obvious message that you only have one body and if you don't look after it, this is what can happen. There was also a real life giraffe at the end, which (this sounds idiotic) was absolutely huge! I know giraffes are big, but I had no idea of their real scale. It was standing full height, skin removed, and sliced down the middle so the vertebrae and internal organs were exposed.

With the exception of the foetuses, I thought it was a really good exhibition. I just couldn't bring myself round to accepting that displaying aborted foetuses was morally right. All the adults had consented to being preserved, and had donated their bodies for exhibiting. But, with that one issue aside, it was truly facinating. And it definitely gave you food for thought. A definite wake up call... look after your body. You only have one, and it's an amazingly fragile yet complex and resistant thing.